Michael Gove: Mr Speaker, with your permission I would like to make a statement on our preparations to leave the European Union on 31 October and the steps we are taking to get ready.
It is the strong desire of this Government to leave the EU with a deal, and our proposals to replace the backstop were published last week. I commend the Prime Minister and the Exit Secretary for their continued efforts to ensure that we can leave the EU with a withdrawal agreement in place. We have put forward a fair and reasonable compromise for all sides that respects the historic referendum result, and we hope that the EU will engage with us seriously. In setting out these proposals, we have moved. It is now time for the EU to move, too. If it does, there is still every chance that we can leave with a new deal. However, if the EU does not move, this Government are prepared to leave without a deal on the 31st. We must get Brexit done, so that the country can move on and focus on improving the NHS, cutting crime, helping families with the cost of living and further improving school standards.
In preparing for every eventuality, we are today publishing our “No-Deal Readiness Report”. This document is a comprehensive summary of the UK’s preparedness for leaving the EU without a deal. It sets out the preparations that the Government have made and how these have been intensified under the determined leadership of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and it also outlines the steps that third-party organisations need to take to get ready.
The actions in this report reflect our top priority: ensuring that we maintain the smooth and efficient flow of goods and people from the UK into the EU, and vice versa. The actions are also aimed at ensuring that we continue to support citizens, upholding their rights and helping them to prepare for the changes ahead. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor, to prepare for Brexit, has doubled funding from £4 billion to £8 billion. We have published a significant volume of material relating to no-deal planning, including 750 pieces of guidance setting out the steps that businesses, traders and citizens should take to prepare. We have also published 31 country guides for all EU and European Free Trade Association states, setting out what UK nationals living there need to do to get ready for Brexit.
This morning, my right hon. Friend the Trade Secretary has published the temporary tariff regime, which will apply from 1 November. In all, it liberalises tariffs on 88% of goods entering the UK by value. It maintains a mixture of tariffs and quotas on 12% of goods, such as beef, lamb, pork, poultry and some dairy products, to support farms and producers that have historically been protected through high EU tariffs in the past. I should say that, as a result of cutting these tariffs, we should see a 15% reduction in the cost of honey from New Zealand, a 9% cut in the cost of grapes from South America and of course a 7% reduction in the cost of wine from Argentina.
Businesses raised a number of points in response to the publication of the tariff schedule in March. The Government listened carefully to these representations  and have made three specific changes as a result: we are reducing tariffs on heavy goods vehicles entering the UK; we are adjusting tariffs on bioethanol to retain support for UK producers; and we are also applying tariffs to additional clothing products to ensure that developing countries continue to have preferential access.
But it is not enough just for Government to get ready; we need businesses and citizens to get ready too. Even with every Government project complete and necessary IT systems in place, flow at the border would still be affected if hauliers do not have the right paper- work. If companies do not prepare, they will face challenges in trading their goods and services with the EU. While the Government can of course lobby EU member states to improve their offer to UK nationals who are living in their countries, we need individuals to act as well—to register for residency and to make arrangements for continued access to healthcare. For that reason, the Government have invested £100 million in one of the largest public information campaigns in peacetime. [Interruption.] I am glad hon. Members have noticed.
Through both mass market and targeted advertising, we are alerting business and citizens to the actions they need to take to get ready. We are also providing a further £108 million to support businesses in accessing the information and advice they need. My right hon. Friend the Business Secretary is overseeing a series of events with businesses around the country, designed to provide information on all the steps they need to take to get ready, including actions that will support the flow of trade through the short strait. My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary has also today established a trader readiness support unit for suppliers of medical products. This week, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is writing to 180,000 businesses, setting out the full range of steps that they need to take in order to import and export with the EU after we leave.
Of course, in advance of 31 October, we will continue to use every means at our disposal to communicate to business the need to get ready. I want to pay particular tribute to the automotive, retail and transport sectors, including authorities at the port of Dover and at Calais, as well as Eurotunnel, for the extent of their Brexit preparations. On a recent visit to the west midlands, the heartland of our automotive industry, I was impressed by the steps that manufacturers are taking to prepare. Retail businesses have also made significant strides: Morrisons, for example, now reports it is “prepared for all eventualities” in the UK, while the Co-op says it is
“prepared for the worst case”.
Of course, risks remain and challenges for some businesses cannot be entirely mitigated, even with every possible preparation in place, but the UK economy is in a much better position to meet those risks and challenges, thanks to the efforts of these sectors and companies, and to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.
It is also the case that the impact of no deal on both the UK and the EU will depend on decisions taken by the EU and its member states. On citizens’ rights, internal security, data protection and of course the vital position of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, we have taken decisions that will benefit UK nationals as well as EU citizens. I hope the EU will match the generosity and flexibility that we have shown.
Through the EU settlement scheme, we have ensured that every EU citizen resident here by 31 October can acquire a formal UK immigration status, protecting their right to live and work in the UK. To date, 1.7 million citizens have applied and 1.5 million have been granted a status. Those who have not yet applied have until the end of December 2020 to do so. So far, very few EU member states have made as generous an offer to UK nationals as the UK has made to EU citizens. We do not believe that citizens’ rights should be used as a bargaining chip in any scenario. EU citizens in the UK are our friends and family, and we want them to stay. We now hope that the EU extends the same hand of friendship towards UK nationals as we have to EU nationals.
At the same time, keeping our fellow citizens safe should be a priority. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has written to Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans to ensure effective arrangements are in place on the exchange of passenger name record data, disconnection from Schengen information system II and working arrangements with Europol, as well as the transfer of law enforcement data. We hope the EU will respond positively, in the interests of the shared security of us all. We have also unilaterally ensured that personal data can continue to flow freely and legally from the UK to the EU and the European economic area. A swift adequacy decision from the EU would reciprocate this arrangement, providing legal certainty to EU entities and companies.
With respect to Northern Ireland, to avoid a hard border we have committed not to introduce any checks at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. The limited number of checks that do need to take place, due to international obligations, will all be carried out well away from the border and will only affect a very small number of businesses. The Irish Government and the EU have not yet set out how they will manage the Irish border if we leave without a deal. We urge them now to match our commitment.
Let me, finally, turn to the opportunities from Brexit as laid out in this report. For the first time in 50 years, the UK will have an independent trade policy and we will be able to take our own seat at the World Trade Organisation. We will be able to introduce a points-based immigration system that prioritises the skills that we need as a country. We will have autonomy over the rules governing our world-leading services sector, and we will continue our leading role in setting global standards for financial services. We can be a beacon for the world in setting progressive policies on farming, fishing and the wider environment. Outside the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, we will set our own rules, putting in place smarter, more responsive regulation.
Of course, no deal will bring challenges. I have been open about that today, as I have been in the past. It is not my preferred outcome, nor the Government’s. We want a good deal. Whatever challenges no deal may create in the short term—and they are significant—they can and will be overcome. Far worse than the disruption of no deal would be the damage to democracy caused by dishonouring the referendum result—17.4 million people voted to leave, many turning up to vote for the first time in their lives. They voted to ensure that the laws by which we are governed are set by the politicians in this place whom they elect. They voted for a fairer migration system that attracts the brightest and the best.  They voted to end vast financial contributions to the EU budget, and instead invest in the people’s priorities such as the NHS and our brave police service. That is what the British people voted for, and that is what this Government will deliver. I commend this statement to the House.

Michael Gove: I am grateful to the shadow Brexit Secretary for his questions. First, he asked where the Prime Minister was. The Prime Minister is talking to our EU partners, attempting to secure a good deal, and he is doing so with the full-hearted support of everyone on the Government Benches. The question that many people will be asking outside the House is why, if the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) says that he is anxious for a deal, he declined to support one on the three opportunities he had to do so. If he wants to be taken seriously as an advocate of compromise and a deal why, in cross-party talks in which we both took part, did he attempt to erect an obstacle at every turn to consensus across the House? That is the conclusion that people will draw.
There is another conclusion that people will draw. The no-deal report was made public three hours before the right hon. and learned Gentleman began asking questions. Having had time to absorb 156 pages, he did  not have a single question about no-deal preparation; not a single point to make about how any sector could be better prepared; not a single suggestion, query or contribution about how we can ensure that British business is in a robust position. There was just a series of questions that we have come to expect from him about politics, rather than policy; about positioning, rather than practicalities.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked about customs checks in Northern Ireland. He knows—it has been made clear—that those customs checks can take place away from the border, at the manufacturer or other distribution sites. He also asked whether our proposals were serious about maintaining the integrity of the single market. They allow the EU to maintain the integrity of the single market, but is he serious about maintaining the integrity of the United Kingdom, because he and his party are more than willing to see a customs border erected in the Irish sea? We would be the only sovereign nation in the world with such a customs border, but he is more than prepared to dance to the EU’s tune, rather than standing up for the UK.
That is the spirit in which the Benn Act was passed. That Act signals to the EU that there are people in Parliament who do not want to conclude a deal, who do not want to leave by 31 October and who want to delay. Indeed, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is one of them. He has had every opportunity to engage meaningfully with Government, not just on the deal but on no-deal preparations.
When I last spoke to the House, on 25 September—the right hon. Gentleman referred to my statement then—I invited any MP in this House to come to the Cabinet Office and the Department for Exiting the European Union to discuss a deal and our no-deal preparations. Only one Opposition MP, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), accepted that invitation. Oh sorry—and the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon). Two Opposition MPs. That is the measure of the seriousness with which the Labour party, the SNP and all the Opposition parties take our Brexit negotiations: an open offer, an invitation, to come and talk rejected hands down.
Is there any surprise? The right hon. Gentleman in 2017 said of the referendum:
“We’ve had a decision and we respect that decision.”
He also said that the Labour party cannot spend all its time trying to “rub out yesterday” and not accept a result it is honour-bound to respect. As I mentioned earlier, after voting against the deal three times, he rejected the opportunity to come to a consensus between the Front Benches to get a deal through.
We in this Government have compromised. We in this Government are showing flexibility. We in this Government seek to leave without a deal, but faced with the delaying, disruptive and denying tactics of the Opposition we say, on behalf of the 17.4 million: enough, enough, enough—we need to leave.

Michael Gove: I am grateful, as ever, for the thoughtful tone in which the right hon. Gentleman asks his questions. I am also grateful for the opportunity, which I hope I will have, to appear in front of his Committee to discuss in detail some of the provisions within the document. We take a different view on the Act that bears his name. I think it weakens the UK Government’s position. He in all conscience believes that it strengthens the UK’s position, but we disagree on that. It is of course possible, for a host of reasons, that we might leave on 31 October without a deal, and it is prudent that this Government—and indeed the Scottish Government and the Welsh Assembly Government, led by Labour—are preparing for that, because that eventuality is a realisable and potential outcome. In the meantime, I am anxious to secure a deal. I argued that we should leave the European Union without a deal, but if it is impossible to leave the European Union without a deal, then, much though I regret it, we have to leave.